In our household, once retirement happens we really do not have income to invest - but we certainly do manage our portfolio. Some people do have income (pensions, RMDs, etc.) that exceed their expenses. Such people may be view as investing or managing the existing portfolio.

A person's money needs to last as long as that person does, potentially even longer if that person wishes to pass money on to heirs or charities. Unless a combination of Social Security + pensions + drawdown of pure cash savings provides enough cash flow to last a person for the rest of his or her life and meet his or her estate goals, that person will likely have to invest during retirement.

That said, it is quite common for retirees to have different investing goals and financial priorities than people in the accumulation phase of their lives. For instance, volatility risk is generally a bigger deal for retirees than for people still putting new money away. After all, if a person has to sell assets to cover costs, that person doesn't have the luxury of waiting for a recovery from a downswing in the market to get the money he or she needs today.

I don't mean to speak poorly about anyone, but I would not pay TMF good money to tell you how to invest your money. Just go to Bogleheads.org and get all the free advice you could ever want, and the folks there don't get paid anything, nor do they get any commissions, fees, or give advice that ends up costing you additional fees and commissions. Just saying. Good luck.

Keep in mind that "retirement" can have different meanings to different people. There is a good chance that we will retire from bi-monthly paychecks at 58 (about 2 years). However, I hope to be involved with some stuff at our high school and in our adult education programs that will provide a little income. My husband might very well do some consulting--occasional income and paid-for vacations to Dept of Energy sites around the country. We enjoy working on houses and so plan to buy and renovate a house every 1-2 years while we can (probably a good 10 years if we are careful). Good chance we will sell our current house and build another since we anticipate the real estate market will come back at some point in the next 10 years.

We consider it retirement, although we plan not to use much of our savings--just enough to fill in the gaps occasionally--we'll still have some income. We'll continue to save up from whatever is current income for big vacations and cars; we'll contribute back to our emergency fund as we use it. Not sure yet when we'll start social security or my husband's pension--depends on how a few more things fall out over the next few years.

That is the current Plan A. We think it has enough flexibility to work for the foreseeable future. We have several spreadsheets to track expenditures and investments and to estimate taxes. We are starting to play around with models that estimate retirement income and taxes.

This is all a long way of trying to explain that your question really does not have a yes/no answer--it depends on how you define retirement and what your savings and expenditures are and what you have for social security and pensions and what you think your investments will do.... And the only way to formulate a plan for YOU is to create (or find) spreadsheets that allow you to try out various scenarios.

I've thought about that question last month as I retired at the end of December. According to my plan, we have enough, with pensions and SS to last 35 years (that's just how far I projected). So I pondered about going all cash. Two things stop me from doing this. The first is we'd like to leave an inheritance to the kids, so they'd have a good start on their retirement. The second is, what if I was wrong on our needs?

There is only one way I know of to be 100% certain you'll have enough in retirement. It is to work until you die. The second best way, although not 100% certain, is to continue to invest, which gives you the opportunity to grow your retirement fund, giving you a better chance to beat inflation and meet your needs. Of the two choices, I pick the second.

Belinda,Yes!Since you have asked the question there must be some concern or issue you have in mind. What is it?Most folks who retire have some amount of savings or investments at the time of retirement. The amount must be managed and hopefully will make some gains after retirement even though one may not have new money to add to savings and investments.

I used to believe that virtually everyone should manage his or her own money. And then I got decent at managing my own, got a gig writing for the Fool, and got "help" requests from friends, family, and (non-Fool) coworkers. By contract I can't give investing advice, but I used to offer up DIY resource information on where people could learn for themselves. Almost universally, the DIY resources were rejected, usually with something like "just let me know when you open your own advising service, and I'll happily pay you to invest my money", or "I don't want to think about this, I just need someone to help me."

Some of these people have far more money than I'm likely ever to see. They're retirees from the "good old days" of strong employer-funded plans, incredibly successful commission-based sales people, part owners in a local startup that has been wildly successful, etc.... They're people who've earned their money but have neither the current skill set nor the desire to learn how to do it themselves.

I still believe that virtually everyone can manage his or her own money, but I've come in contact with enough people that could but don't manage their money and who don't want to, that I've come to accept that there's a legitimate need for decent guidance.

The key things I like about the 30 day free trial of Rule Your Retirement are1) It really is free -- cancel in time and you don't get charged. Even if you forget to cancel in time, from what I've seen with trial members in the other premium services, the Fool's customer service is typically very quick to help those who've forgotten to cancel.2) If you spend the free 30 days digging through the service, you can find pretty much what you need to get the basics of do it yourself if you want to.3) If you have questions during that 30 day window, the entire team and other members are available on the boards.4) While it's not how I manage my own money, the allocation principles and model portfolios at Rule Your Retirement were created by a couple of CFPs, look to be decently balanced, and include index-fund based portfolios.5) The service is about far more than just managing your retirement portfolio. There's estate planning information, insurance information, health and wellbeing information, etc.

Free is a great price, and DIY investment management is still a legitimate opportunity for anyone with the time, talent, and interest to give it a whirl. With an active free 30 days to Rule Your Retirement, a person can figure out for him or herself if:* The intro was enough of a "point me in the right direction" education to become a committed DIY investor,* The person doesn't like what Rule Your Retirement has to offer, or* The service is worth paying for.

Personally, I get the service for free as someone with a "TMF" in the front of my ID. I respect it enough that it was my Mother's Day gift to my own mother in 2013. I don't get a commission for pointing the service out to people, but I will tell you that pointing people towards the service has kept more friendships intact and avoided more family squabbles than the "I can't give investing advice, here's how you can figure out how to go do it yourself" line ever did.

There is only one way I know of to be 100% certain you'll have enough in retirement. It is to work until you die. The second best way, although not 100% certain, is to continue to invest, which gives you the opportunity to grow your retirement fund, giving you a better chance to beat inflation and meet your needs. Of the two choices, I pick the second.

Agreed.

However, as someone who has managed his own IRA investments for many years, I hasten to point out that investments in your IRA are like money from heaven -- UNLESS YOU DO STUPID THINGS IN THERE. (If you manage to pee it away on dumb investments, it's gone. Pffft.)

Explanation: You can increase whatever you have in your IRA as much as your wits and skills and luck will let you, and you will pay NO taxes on anything you earn in there, until you take it out. When you withdraw anything, you may pay taxes, depending in how much you withdraw, other sources of income, SS income, etc.

Think about that.

Say you start with $50,000 in your IRA and manage to shift some or all of it into various investments that then grow that boodle to $500,000, still all within the IRA. You owe NO taxes on any of that "profit"! However, after age 59-1/2, if and when you choose to withdraw all or part of that money, you WILL be taxed then, depending on your overall total income level, SS income, and other factors.

This looks like a good place to get feedback on my plan for retirement (which is some years down the road) as I presently plan to continue to invest in my retirement years. If (and I know this is a very big IF) we can manage to achieve a balance of roughly $800,000 in our IRAs, my thought is that we would create our own little "mutual fund" of dividend paying stocks. If we do, does it seem to be too much to have 75 - 100 different companies? Are there that many different solid dividend paying stocks?

Right now I have a small Roth account from which I am trying to garner some experience in managing my own portfolio. From what I have experienced, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect an overall annual dividend of 3%, which would equate to $24,000 the first year on an $800,000 portfolio. The other thing I have seen is that many companies tend to increase their dividends each year, some as much as 10% or more. What starts as 3% of $800,000 may be 4% the next year. And if the market is right, the $800,000 portfolio will increase in value. If I can live off the dividens, who know what it might increase to. Even if I needed to withdraw some of the principal in the early years, it seems like this should keep us from going bankrupt - provided I make sound investment choices - and diversify.

My spouse has a small pension and will be able to draw SS in about 4 years, so this wouldn't be the only source of income. To be sure we are prepared for a downturn in the market, I plan to keep a cash reserve equal to 2 -3 years of the minimum needed to meet the bills.

...does it seem to be too much to have 75 - 100 different companies? Are there that many different solid dividend paying stocks?

Right now I have a small Roth account from which I am trying to garner some experience in managing my own portfolio. From what I have experienced, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect an overall annual dividend of 3%...

It's terrific that you are thinking long-term. But, if I may, it sounds like you're fairly new to this stuff. Short answer is: unless you want to spend a lot of your time researching individual stocks, you can accomplish what you want with a handful of ETFs (and also save on transaction costs).

Also, you should certainly be able to do better than 3%. In "normal" times, even CDs pay more than that. We are not in normal times now; eventually, things will become more "normal."

And if for no other reason than to protect yourself from large equity swings (after all, some folks lost almost everything a few years ago), you'll want to have at least some portion of your money in bonds. That can also be accomplished with some ETFs if you don't want to spend a lot of time on homework.

So where is there information on high quality fixed income approach? I saw someone suggest under a different thread that the reader visit a T M F board about bonds but didn't find such a board. Could someone provide a link?

So where is there information on high quality fixed income approach? I saw someone suggest under a different thread that the reader visit a T M F board about bonds but didn't find such a board. Could someone provide a link? - FoolishGardner